You say potato. . .

    Friday was a marathon day of planting, trying to get some things in before the rain hit on Saturday.  My seed potatoes had arrived on Tuesday and I was waiting for the ground to dry out to get them planted.  So, when I got home from work on Thursday evening I was able to hitch up the tiller and get the ground worked up.  The seed potatoes arrive whole and you have to cut them into pieces before planting.  Each piece should have a couple of "eyes," from which the new potato plant will grow.  Dad usually helps me cut up the potatoes, but he was in Tennessee on a fishing trip, so I figured I'd be up most of the night cutting them.  I got an unexpected surprise though, as a crew assembled to help with the cutting.  Dale Clapper, who is one of the guys I make maple syrup with, showed up, and mom pitched in and called her best friend, Carol Butler, to come over.  With their help the job was finished in no time.   Here's the crew.

This red potato is red all the way through!  I'm bummed though because the seed company ran out of my purple potatoes that are purple all the way through and didn't send them.  Too late now to order them from somewhere else.  :-( 

Carol Butler really knows how to get her hands dirty!

Here's the finished product.  180lbs of potatoes ready to plant Friday morning!

This is Friday morning.  I have a "potato plow" that my dad bought me at an auction a few years ago.  I think it was originally built to be pulled behind a horse, but I use the tractor.  I roped Greg Zink into driving the tractor for me so I could use the plow to make the furrows to plant the potatoes. 

Three furrows made.  Surely that's enough for all my seed, right? 

Carol Butler came back to help me plant the potatoes.  She was my savior!  Turns out three rows was no where near enough to plant all my seed.  We ended up planting three more rows and still had seed left over!

This is Carol driving the tractor so we can add three more rows of potatoes.

A farm girl from way back, Carol really knows how to wield a hoe!  I really can't express how thankful I am for her help getting in the potatoes before the rain came.

I always joke with my friends that some girls are just built for "hoe-ing" and I am one of them--I can hoe for hours and not wake up sore the next day!  :-)  I didn't inherit these broad shoulders and strong back from my Slovak grandmothers for nothing!

Turns out the rain didn't set in until after dark on Friday, so I had some time to get some greens planted as well.  Kelley and Capria came to help.  This is Capria helping me plant Swiss Chard.  Capria is my right hand farm girl; she is my neighbor and the hardest working eighth grade girl I know!   You will see her with me every Saturday at Farmer's Market as well.  I don't know what I'd do without that girl!

It was bugging me that I had over thirty pounds of potato seed leftover even after planting six rows instead of three. (Now you see why my garden plan flies out the window soon after I start planting.)  So, just before it got dark Kelley and Capria helped me get one last row of potatoes planted.  This is Kelley steering the potato plow.

The plow was proving a little too much for her handle though (I didn't want crooked rows!) so we switched places and Kelley drove the tractor instead.  She was pretty excited to drive the tractor--she did great!